No, this is not the only real picture of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 28, 2022
A photo through a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that it was the only real picture of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Only real picture of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh.
Fact: There are four real pictures of Bhagat Singh which are in the public domain. According to some biographers of Bhagat Singh, there are only four real photographs of Bhagat Singh that are ever found. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
When reverse image search is done on the photo, the same photo was shared by the official twitter account of Prasar Bharati. Prasar Bharati is India’s public service broadcaster. According to the tweet, the person in the picture is Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh, and it was taken in 1927 in Lahore, during his first arrest. Bhagat Singh is said to have been photographed when he was detained in 1927 in connection with the Lahore Dussehra bomb case (25 October 1926), with Gopal Singh Pannu.
However, in the same Twitter thread by Prasar Bharati, another picture of Bhagat Singh was posted. In the next picture, Bhagat Singh could be seen standing fourth from the right. The photo was taken in 1923 with the students of National College Lahore. So, the picture shared in the viral post is not the only picture of Bhagat Singh.
History in the picx: Rare pic of students & staff of National College, Lahore. #BhagatSingh standing fourth from the right. pic.twitter.com/SN1Nfg50OS
Biographers of Bhagat Singh, Chaman Lal, and Malwinder Jit Singh Waraich had urged several times to the governments in Punjab and Delhi, to use only the real photos of Bhagat Singh in government correspondence. In Waraich’s Bhagat Singh: The Eternal Rebel (published by Ministry of Information and Broadcasting), and in Chaman Lal’s Bhagat Singh Reader, it is said that there are only four real photographs of Bhagat Singh.
There are a couple of other photographs of Bhagat Singh, in the public domain. One is the photo of Bhagat Singh when he was a child. The other is of Bhagat Singh when he was photographed in 1929, before the Assembly Bomb explosion.
Prof. Malwinder Jit Singh Waraich (a biographer of Bhagat Singh) had requested through his Facebook page, to share only these four genuine photographs of Bhagat Singh.
To sum it up, the photo shared in the post is not the only real picture of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh.